The Truth Project: Lesson Two

Lesson 2 – Philosophy and Ethics: Says Who?
We can be taken captive!!! Colossians 2:8
Assumptions are the most dangerous form of knowledge because we tend to buy concepts without examining their fundamental assumptions.

The Cosmic Cube: a philosophy trying to take over the world. Pushed by Carl Sagan and others secular humanists/naturalists.
It claims that the universe is all there is, ever was, or ever will be. It begins with the assumption that God is NOT. When one accepts this philosophy, the cosmos is all one has to use in attempting to answer life’s questions, and it is woefully inadequate.
Implications: There is NOTHING outside the box (the visible universe). No God, no matter, no energy, NOTHING.
The Biblical View: God DOES exist, He created the box (the universe), and He works inside the box. This view is built on the fundamental presupposition that God IS and has revealed Himself in Creation and in the Bible.
---Do we really live that way?? Do we really LIVE OUT our belief that God IS and relates to us?? If we were to truly live that out 24/7, our lives would be dramatically different.

Philosophy: love of wisdom, a scientific quest to discover ultimate reality – Reality = TRUTH!!!! So philosophy is pretty important!
Webster’s 1828 dictionary: “true religion and true philosophy must ultimately arrive at the same principle;” philosophy’s goal is “to enlarge our understanding of God.”
As time went on, Philosophy switched to searching for the Universals…the big stuff. When you understand the universals, the particulars tend to fall into place. In ancient Greek there was a battle between emphasizing the universals and emphasizing the particulars. This philosophical dilemma is pictured in Raphael’s painting The School of Athens. [I won’t post it here, but here is a picture of friends posing as a representation of it :D] Plato, on the left, is arguing for the Universals; Aristotle, on the right, is arguing for the Particulars. Man has tried for centuries to start with the particulars and get back up to the universals, but it never works. Until you understand the universals, you really can not get the particulars. God is the only source for accurately understanding those universals.

Postmodernism claims that there is no truth – but no one can really live like that.
You can’t really live in an unreal world…there is always a point at which such a person will be inconsistent.

How do you answer what is right and what is wrong if you are only in the box and all that you have to look at is in the box?? In such a situation, MIGHT is what make right: whoever can most forcefully convince others of their view will win. This also leads to ethics determined by 51% percent of a pure democracy. This type of system leads only to oppression and crushed people.
In reality, ethics are based, not on fallible men, but on the infallible God. For example, lying is wrong because it is counter to God’s character, not for any other reason. The Ten Commandments can thus never change, because God does not change.

When people believe in evolution, these are the implications that they knowingly or unknowingly espouse (according to Dr. William Provine [who can also be seen in Expelled]): NO God/god, NO ultimate foundation for ethics, NO life after death, NO free will, NO meaning for life. Watch out what you swallow with your science classes!!!!!!

The difference between morality and ethics: so often we use them interchangeably, but they really are separate things.
Morality looks at what IS.
Ethics looks at what OUGHT to be.
Ethics therefore must be the foundation, not morality.

One of the major problems in our country is a failure to see Christianity as a system that governs EVERY area of our lives.
If you buy the world’s lies, you will end up conforming to the world.
Life changes when the mind changes.
We must be transformed by God’s Spirit. The Greek word translated ‘transformed’ in 2 Corinthians 3:18 is the same word as in Romans 12:2 and it is also the same word describing Christ’s transfiguration (Matthew 17, Mark 9, or Luke 9). It is the word metamorphoo. Think about that next time you talk about becoming like Christ…it is to be like the metamorphosis of a butterfly, completely and entirely changing your whole being.

If we don’t believe God’s truth claims and act on them, the truth will not survive until the next generation. It will die, because that is exactly what the world, the flesh and the devil want. [That’s what he said, but I think that God Himself also has a lot to do with the preservation of the truth….He does, however, use people who are willing to be radically different than the world around them.]